"Will Hand" wrote in message
...
Morning all.

This is how I see things panning out in broad terms. I'll leave the detail
to the official Met Office forecasts later.

High pressure is now building over Scandinavia in response to the deep low
west of Ireland in association with a southerly jet thrusting low
potential vorticity polewards. On Saturday this high will nudge west and
as there are no more Atlantic lows the gate will open to the cold air from
the east to start to flood westwards. Deep cold air will arrive on Sunday
with thicknesses below 528DAM and this will be very unstable to sea
temperatures with CB tops up to 15000 feet bringing heavy snow showers to
the east which will settle. These will then spread westwards on Sunday
night as organised PV filaments form troughs in association with the cold
pool bringing quite widespread snow due to release of upper level
instability. Meanwhile during Monday warm advection to the SE over Europe
and also some PV forcing will encourage low pressure to form over SE
England and this will then meander westwards into England on Tuesday and
Wednesday with bands of sleet and snow rotating around it, air will be a
little warmer at this stage so rain is possible near coasts in the SW. By
Thursday this low will have merged with the Atlantic low complex and this
is where the key to the cold spell lies. If the low merges a long way west
then that will open the gate to milder southwesterlies into the south
spreading north as per some model solutions. Consensus allows a merging
over Ireland which will then mean some digging of cold air down from the
north on Friday and Saturday in response to warm advection over eastern
Canada and western Greenland. We then get into a cold northerly type which
will either collapse as per ECMWF or reinforce. If the low stays put over
England and Wales then a stronger northerly could come down later and then
we would enter a prolonged severe cold spell as per earlier runs.

That's the way I see it ATM, it is quite a finely balanced setup longer
term. Short term is cold no question about that with snow for many.

Ciao, :-)

Will
-------------------
Seems to coincide nicely with Darren's analysis. I will forget the models
for a while and watch the forecasts in the hope my daughter (born Feb 1st
1981) will get a birthday present she will enjoy. (Funny how many of these
snow lovers there are , really ;-)

Dave
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